Bert’s Beauty Shots: Revealing Stars

Last night was a great night for some moon photos. Clear sky for 30 minutes. It’s one thing to take a photo of the moon, however, it’s much more fun if you process the photo in such a way that you can see the stars. Lot of people seem surprised they see this photo because they claim ‘there weren’t any stars’. Oh yes there were, you just can’t see them with your naked eye, as they are too far away. I can hardly see them with my camera, however, they are there.

Here’s a way to make the stars appear, just by doing a bit of processing. Take the photo with the highest possible resolution. Blow the photo up or crop it. Add an HDR filter and do a bit of gamma-correction. The photo will now show the stars in various colored pixels. Remove the colors and you have the stars.

It sounds easy and guess what….it is. Matter of minutes, a bit of a strong lens and there you go: The moon as the lens captured it last night.

Soon I’ll show you some star-trails, which is a bit easier to start with for those who are interested in the universe.